Ruminations and ponderings by the Last of the Montgomery Rebels Fans on the Montgomery Biscuits and Montgomery Alabama area baseball history.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Welcome to the Biscuits, Joe Van Meter

Joe Van Meter joined the Biscuits today and immediately entered the starting rotation.
He was defeated in his first start for the Skitz, giving up three runs in six innings with four strikeouts against the Generals. He scattered four hits and only one walk on his way to a loss capped by Austin Hubbard's implosion - two innings, six hits, one walk which totaled six runs on two homers including a grand slam.

Immediately following the game I tweeted Van Meter "Welcome to the Biscuits", and got a polite thankyou in return.

Poor guy, gets to come to a new team and before he knows it he is getting a loss after watching the bullpen get hammered - he gets to his locker and checks his phone and there is my tweet, which has GOT to make him feel welcomed, right? Who wouldn't feel welcome after taking a loss in front of 813 people on a Wednesday night and coming in to see a tweet like that?

VAN METER FILE

The six foot two righthander weighs in at 195, from Virginia Commonwealth U in his birth state. Tom Robbins, Sean Marshall, members of the band GWAR are all former VCU Rams. Selected in the 21st round by Texas, he was a third baseman in college and still holds batting records there, as well as making two starts and relief appearances.

Joe calls himself a New Yorker, he went to highschool in Oyster Bay New York and cites Mariano Rivera and Jeter as his favorite players. He lists "A Bronx Tale" as his fave movie and prefers pasta and pizza as comfort food.

So far this season he has been at High-A Myrtle Beach, where he spent most of last year as well. There at single-A+, he was a reliever and spot starter with respectable numbers, 3.31 ERA in 51.2 innings pitched. He strikes out plenty of hitters, getting 62 whiffs.

The issue that got him exiled from the Rangers could be allowing too many baserunners - Van Meter walked 25 and allowed 51 hits. That could mean he is always pitching from the stretch and can work his way into trouble often.

Van Meter got a few games in at double-A Frisco last year without much success, seven runs in five innings over three games. This year he was sent to Frisco again and it went about the same, getting into six games and taking losses in four of them.

Most of those numbers are from facing hitters in relief at a
lower level than he will face as a member of the Montgomery rotation. Its a challenge and we shall see how he does over the final few turns in the rotation.